2020

Irene Solà (born in Malla, near Barcelona, in 1990) has a degree in fine arts from the University of Barcelona and a master’s in literature, film and visual culture from the University of Sussex. Her first book of poems, Bèstia (Galerada, 2012), was awarded the Amadeu Oller Poetry Prize and has been translated into English (as Beast, Shearsman Books, 2017). Her first novel, Els dics (The Dams, L’Altra Editorial, 2018), won the Documenta prize and was awarded a grant for literary creation by the Catalan Department of Culture.

Maria Navarro Skaranger (1994) was born and lives in Oslo. She has studied writing at the Academy of Creative Writing in Hordaland and comparative literature at the University of Oslo. As the author of just two books, Skaranger displays an impressive preciseness in the way she brings up relevant themes with great originality. Her debut novel All the Foreigners Have Closed Curtains (2015) is the first Norwegian book written in a consistent multi-ethnolect from a diverse Oslo suburb, her language absorbing expressions from different countries and backgrounds.

Stavros Christodoulou was born in 1963 in Nicosia, Cyprus. He studied law in Athens but has never practiced the legal profession since he had already dedicated himself to journalism at the end of the 1980s. He has worked as managing director of various magazines in Greece and Cyprus and currently works for the leading Cypriot newspaper Phileleftheros as a columnist. His first book Hotel National, published by Kalentis Publications in Athens in 2016, was shortlisted for the Cyprus State Literature Prize and for a competition run by the literary magazine Hourglass.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof (born 1988) is an award-winning Danish poet and author and a graduate of the Danish Academy of Creative Writing, where she now teaches. Her debut novel Et ansigt til Emily (A Face for Emily, Basilisk, Copenhagen, 2011) won the Munch-Christensen Debutant Prize. In 2013, she won, among other awards, the Montana Literary Award for her critically acclaimed poetry collection Det nemme og det ensomme (The Easiness and the Loneliness, Basilisk, Copenhagen, 2013), which sold over 10 000 copies in Denmark and was translated into English and other languages.

Shpëtim Selmani was born on 16 May 1986. He received a master’s degree from the Academy of Arts at the University of Prishtina. He acts in theatre performances in the country and internationally, and has received awards for his acting. He is a regular contributor to the alternative blog S’bunker. He was part of the ‘Crocodile’ literary residence in Belgrade in 2014, and 3 years later took part in the ‘Poeteka, Tirana in Between’ literary residence in Tirana.